1987: Supreme Court rules against soldier experimented on with LSD without consent

James Stanley, a career soldier was one of these unwitting subjects who was given LSD in 1958. He suffered hallucinations, memory loss incoherence, and severe personality changes and exhibited uncontrollable violence. It destroyed his family, impeded his working ability, and he never knew why until the Army asked him to participate in a follow-up study. Staley sued for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA); his case reached the Supreme Court where it was argued and decided in 1987. The Court dismissed his claim (5 – 4), ruling that his injuries occurred during military service. Justices Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and Sandra Day O’Conner wrote strong dissenting opinions, arguing that the Nuremberg Code applies to soldiers as well as civilians. (Read more CIA Mind Control Experiments

In 1987, the Supreme Court 4-to-5 decision in United States v. Stanley denied the right of a soldier given LSD without his consent to sue the U.S. Army for damages. James Stanley, a career soldier was one of 1,000 military “volunteers” who were given LSD in 1958. They suffered hallucinations, memory loss, incoherence, and severe personality changes. James Stanley became uncontrollably violent; it destroyed his family, impeded his ability to work, and he never knew why until the Army asked him to participate in a follow-up study.

He then sued for damages. His case reached the Supreme Court which dismissed his claim ruling that soldiers cannot sue for injuries that occurred during military service. Justice William Brennan, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Chief Justice, Thurgood Marshal wrote dissenting opinions:

“The medical trials at Nuremberg in 1947 deeply impressed upon the world that experimentation with unknowing human subjects is morally and legally unacceptable. The United States Military Tribunal established the Nuremberg Code as a standard against which to judge German scientists who experimented with human subjects. The first principle was . . . the voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”

Justice O’Connor went further:

“No judicially crafted rule should insulate from liability the involuntary and unknowing human experimentation alleged to have occurred in this case. Indeed, as Justice Brennan observes, the United States played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecution of Nazi scientists who experimented with human subjects during the Second World War, and the standards that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the ‘voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential . . . to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts.’ If this principle is violated, the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators.”